Andrew Warshaw: Smoking gun but where does it really point us

For three and a half years, ever since FIFA president Sepp Blatter opened the proverbial envelope and pronounced the word “Qatar” to a tense auditorium in Zurich and millions more following proceedings worldwide, hardly a week has gone by without the hosts of the 2022 World Cup being forced on the defensive amid a spate of corruption claims.

Time and again, just when they think the furore over their fourth round landslide victory in December 2010, has died down and they can concentrate on building an infrastructure to be proud of, 2022 officials have had to move into trouble-shooting mode and tell anyone who will listen that they won the bid fairly and squarely and with total integrity even though FIFA’s inspection panel flagged up a number of caveats when they visited the region, not least the searing summer heat.

Whether their critics believe Qatar or not, the fact is none of the allegations of wrongdoing have so far been proven. Yet judging by worldwide reaction over the past 24 hours to the 11 pages of revelations published by the Sunday Times, we could be on the verge of a game-changer.

Forget the winter versus summer debate. Neither that, nor the understandable outcry over Qatar’s human rights record, can justify FIFA stripping the country of host nation status. Simply because no rules have been broken.

Yet now, from Australia to Britain – the former one of Qatar’s vanquished opponents, the latter crushed by Russia for 2018 – the pressure to re-run the 2022 vote has reached unprecedented levels of intensity.

All of us who have followed the chain of events would love to be flies on the wall when Hassan al-Thawadi, the public face of Qatar’s organising committee, comes face to face today with the man charged by FIFA with investigating any wrongdoing in the bidding process in the build-up to both ballots.

Quite why ethics committee prosecutor Michael Garcia is meeting al-Thawadi in Oman and not Qatar has not been fully explained but it is clear that the Sunday Times allegations that millions of dollars were paid from accounts controlled by Mohamed bin Hammam, once Qatar’s most powerful football administrator, to African member federations in order to sway support towards the Gulf state cannot simply be swept under the carpet.

And nor, in all likelihood, will it be. The Qataris are adamant that bin Hammam, a former FIFA vice-president who at the time was the most influential figure in Asian football, played no “official or unofficial” role in what they passionately insist was a totally above-board campaign. Not everyone shares that view, particularly among Qatar’s opponents who can’t work out how someone as prominent as bin Hammam could have been marginalised.

The question is, and it’s a crucial one, will Garcia believe the Qataris or will he be able to prove, without doubt, that bin Hammam was acting as their agent to secure votes exclusively for the World Cup 2022 bid?

Playing devil’s advocate, whilst no-one would deny the detailed ferocity of the Sunday Times’ claims (their previous revelations, let’s not forget, have brought down half a dozen former FIFA executive committee members), there is a case for arguing that bin Hammam’s motives were not to secure votes for Qatar but instead formed part of his strategy to oust Sepp Blatter as FIFA president.

As Britain’s Fifa vice-president Jim Boyce rightly pointed out yesterday, both campaigns were going on at exactly the same time. So was the $5m which was allegedly paid to senior football people in Africa more to do with bin Hammam’s own ambitions to succeed Blatter three years ago, a bid for power which ultimately led to his downfall as a result of the infamous cash-for-votes scandal along with his well-publicised mismanagement of AFC funds?

It’s certainly a counter-argument worth considering especially since there were three other 2022 candidates from Asia so in theory, as Asian Football Confederation boss, bin Hammam should not have shown any bias towards any of them.

Garcia will surely take all of this into account in his eagerly awaited report due out later this year. Qatar’s enemies will doubtless be hoping for a humiliating recommendation to strip them of hosting status. Based on what we know so far, I’m by no means sure that will be the outcome. Firstly, Garcia isn’t even interviewing bin Hammam as part of his remit. Secondly, it is understood FIFA’s ethics committee can only recommend sanctions against individuals – and bin Hammam is already persona non grata. It’s up to the executive committee to take the ultimate, far more damaging, decision to move the World Cup elsewhere. And just to complicate matters further, it has been suggested that only the executive committee that originally chose Russia and Qatar to host the 2018 and 2022 tournaments can respectively make a change – and half of them are no longer there.

Everyone knows how we got into this mess in the first place. FIFA have said that with hindsight it was a mistake to stage both the 2018 and 2022 ballots at the same time, opening the door to all manner of behind-the-scenes wheeler-dealing. It was as a result of the fallout, don’t forget, that Garcia was appointed in the first place almost two years ago.

The next chapter in this increasingly unsavoury saga seems likely to unfold at the forthcoming FIFA Congress in Sao Paulo. Although Qatar per se is not on the agenda, a raft of officials identified by the Sunday Times as having accepted monies will be in attendance. No-one would therefore be surprised if the latest revelations are raised, possibly during the agenda item about FIFA’s much-trumpeted reform process.

Whilst we already know that future World Cup hosts will be decided by Congress and not by an elite few powerbrokers, there is growing momentum among FIFA’s more modern-minded executives to make sure that the rules of engagement during bid campaigns – all-expenses-paid visits by federations to bidding countries, lavish hospitality and the like – are considerably tightened up. The United States, for one, has already made it clear it won’t bid for the 2026 tournament unless there is a sea change, including votes being made public.

In the meantime, the worry for Qatar is what happens next. The Sunday Times says it has far more to come. If the finger is pointed at any remaining exco members who voted back in 2010, or at any known Qatari bid officials, then we are into even more murky territory.

Andrew Warshaw was formerly Sports Editor of the The European newspaper and is chief correspondent of Insideworldfootball. Contact Andrew at moc.l1711717088labto1711717088ofdlr1711717088owdis1711717088ni@wa1711717088hsraw1711717088.werd1711717088na1711717088